STARKVILLE — A bomb threat was called in on the Kroger at 826 Highway 12 Thursday morning. But within 67 minutes, law enforcement gave the “all clear.”
Starkville Police Department Chief Mark Ballard said a caller contacted store management and attempted to elicit money from them. He said the caller gave them a bank account number and then made threats of a bomb being detonated inside the store if money was not transferred to the account.
SPD Public Information Officer Brandon Lovelady said 911 received a call about the threat at around 8:41 a.m.
Ballard said officers were on the scene within 15 seconds.
“Credit to our uniformed patrol division, we had a response time of 15 seconds from the time that the call came out,” Ballard said. “…At the same time that our officers were responding, Kroger, through their own internal training, went ahead and started following their bomb threat protocols and started evacuating the store.”
Kroger employees were evacuated to the Popeye’s parking lot, while officers from SPD, Oktibbeha County Sheriff’s Office and Mississippi State University Police worked together to isolate the store and clear the area.
Other emergency services were also on call in case the situation escalated further, including units from the Starkville Fire Department.
Ballard said MSU Police canine units were used to clear the building and no explosive devices were found. The all clear was given around 9:48 a.m., and Kroger employees were able to return to work.
“I’d like to especially thank Mississippi State University Police Department for being able to utilize their bomb dogs,” Ballard said. “They are absolutely essential tools in these types of situations. We’re very fortunate to have those resources here in Starkville.”
Ballard said this is not the first time that Kroger has been targeted with a bomb threat, but today’s threat was unrelated to any previous local threats.
“We had a pending investigation where an arrest has been made, but this is not the first time Kroger has been targeted with a bomb threat,” Ballard said. “But the signatures of that threat and this one are far different, and we’re very comfortable saying these are unrelated events.”
Ballard said instead, this incident may be connected to a national trend of stores like Kroger being targeted on the West Coast.
“The information we’re receiving from some of our counterparts with the Mississippi Fusion Center is that there has been a national trend, especially on the West Coast, where stores have been targeted very similar to what our Kroger was today,” Ballard said.
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